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Sunday, February 13, 2011

Blowing Up the Police Station

The second building that I'm working on for my PA terrain is the previously mentioned Police Station. The actual building is pictured below:

I am adapting it to fit my modular terrain system, but the general design and exterior finish of my model is very similar. I want my models to be somewhat believable in appearance, so my method of construction depicts the construction methods that I observed being used during an construction of an addition on the station a couple of years ago. My model is based on the original structure, thus everything to the ring of the "tower" is excluded, as is the addition to the left front of the building. I was able to get approximate dimensions using google earth. The following photos show the building as it comes together. The foundation with the base terrain tile layout with parking area below:

I'm trying a new method in construction of the this model. The building features concrete block construction with an outer brick fascia. First, the exterior block wall is constructed with the exposed block pattern pressed in/drawn on with a ball point pen. Then, the thinner brick wall is added around the exterior of the building, using a brick pattern plate made from styrene sheet and strips The foam wall stock panel is cut from the sheet on foam on a band saw, the pattern aligned with the panel, and the pattern is simply pressed in by hand. I've done this with larger stone and block patterns and in larger scales before with great success, but the small brick pattern in 28mm is a little tougher to transfer.

In this case the windows and doors were located and cut out of the block wall. The outer brick wall was then applied over it, requiring the windows to be re-cut into the brick layer using the block layer as a guide. The layers are glued together with artist's matte medium, using straight pins to hold the pieces together while drying. The view below shows the model with some of the windows re-cut into the brick layer and pins still in place in the back wall.

I never had the pleasure (or possibly, misfortune) of exploring the police station, so my interior design my be somewhat chaotic. It is partially based on help from the members of the yahoo group, Baddawg's Landing, http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/BADDAWGS_LANDING/Baddawg's Landing is owned by the Baddawg himself, and filled with all kinds of great stuff for skirmish gamers, (especially modern/near-future/sci-fi gaming) and lots of good people. Assistance from the Landing made this task quite a bit easier than it might have been otherwise. Below you can see the model as it currently stands, with a portion of the interior walls in place.

My time has been getting sucked up by other thinks over the last couple of weeks. So, lots of work to be done still, but since I hadn't posted in a little while, I thought I'd let everyone know I'm not dead yet.

When completed, this will be the dominating structure in my initial PA terrain layout. The building will be about 9 inches tall, with a 13"x17" footprint, and set on a two foot square terrain tile including walkway, drives and parking lot. Hopefully I'll have something more to show by about next Monday.